to which they do not belong; and it is an odd sort of hardship. They
want to receive the emoluments appropriated for teaching one set of
doctrines, whilst they are teaching another. A church, in any legal
sense, is only a certain system of religious doctrines and practices
fixed and ascertained by some law,--by the difference of which laws
different churches (as different commonwealths) are made in various
parts of the world; and the establishment is a tax laid by the same
sovereign authority for payment of those who so teach and so practise:
for no legislature was ever so absurd as to tax its people to support
men for teaching and acting as they please, but by some prescribed rule.

The hardship amounts to this,--that the people of England are not taxed
two shillings in the pound to pay them for teaching, as divine truths,
their own particular fancies. For the state has so taxed the people; and
by way of relieving these gentlemen, it would be a cruel hardship on the
people to be compelled to pay, from the sweat of their brow, the most
heavy of all taxes to men, to condemn as heretical the doctrines which
they repute to be orthodox, and to reprobate as superstitious the
practices which they use as pious and holy. If a man leaves by will an
establishment for preaching, such as Boyle's Lectures, or for charity
sermons, or funeral sermons, shall any one complain of an hardship,
because he has an excellent sermon upon matrimony, or on the martyrdom
of King Charles, or on the Restoration, which I, the trustee of the
establishment, will not pay him for preaching?--S. Jenyns, Origin of
Evil.--Such is the hardship which they complain of under the present
Church establishment, that they have not the power of taxing the people
of England for the maintenance of their private opinions.

The laws of toleration provide for every real grievance that these
gentlemen can rationally complain of Are they hindered from professing